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The Good Ol’ Days: When Gas Was 93 Cents Per Gallon

June 19, 2013 8:25 AM

2012 Toyota Prius (credit: Toyota Motor Corporation)

ATLANTA (WAOK) — When I started driving, gas was 93 cents per gallon. I could fill my tank with $10 and have change for chips and a drink. Today, $10 will get you to the next gas station. The national average for a gallon of gas today is $3.62 per gallon. Help is on the way…or is it?

Automobile manufacturers and our government are looking for ways to make the automobile more fuel efficient and less impactful to our environment.

We had Kevin Butt, general manager and chief environment officer of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America (TEMA), on the show today and he spoke about some of the ways Toyota has improved their operations in relation to the environment. During our conversation, Butt said something that really caught my attention: “The Toyota plant in Kentucky produces zero waste to the landfills.” The plant feeds 7,000 people a day and produces more than 500,000 vehicles a year and through recylcing/reuse programs within the facility, they have found a way reuse all of their waste.

Toyota has long been known for producing energy efficient vehicles, namely the Prius, but this added effort to preserve the environment deserves notice. For more information about Toyota’s environmental efforts, visit Toyota’s website.

We had more than a few enthusiastic listeners call to express their theories about our country’s dependency on traditional fuel sources.

During the second half of the show we spoke about some of the tax advantages to investing in some of the alternate fuel vehicles and I’ve listed two links below to assist in your research: